A network may be characterized by several factors like who can use the network, the type of traffic the network carries, the medium carrying the traffic, the typical nature of the network's connections, and the transmission technology the network uses. For example, one network may be public and carry circuit switched voice traffic while another may be private and carry packet switched data traffic. Whatever the make-up, most networks facilitate the communication of information between at least two nodes, and as such act as communication networks.
At a physical level, a communication network may include a series of nodes interconnected by communication paths. These nodes and communication paths may represent elements of the network. Other elements may include applications, objects, other networks, software, firmware, and/or hardware, associated with the network. As such, a given network may include several elements, and proper management of the network may involve the daunting task of tracking and maintaining several pieces of information for each of these elements.
As the number of to-be-tracked elements and element characteristics increases and the frequency of tracking these characteristics increases, proper network management can become exceedingly difficult, overly resource intensive, and very expensive. Conventional management solutions tend to rely heavily on the availability of trained people and the scalability of deployed storage and computing resources. Unfortunately, these things may not always be available. Moreover, the cost and complexity of simply growing the network management system may become too high.